Bubu Kitty - You will be missed!

]]> http://bakersdog.com/blog/2010/08/goodbye-bubu-kitty/feed/ 3 R.I.P. Bubu http://bakersdog.com/blog/2010/05/taking-a-break/ http://bakersdog.com/blog/2010/05/taking-a-break/#comments Sun, 09 May 2010 13:40:37 +0000 Paul http://bakersdog.com/blog/?p=694

The entire Baker’s Dog crew, including Josie,  is taking a little time off starting May 12th. Any orders placed between the 12th and 19th won’t be shipped until the 2oth. Check out the discounted toys we added to the store! If you’d like to follow us on our great adventure to Nebraska, you can travel with us virtually on Twitter.

We had a little issue. Sorry about that!

We changed our email list software and sign up form last week. As a result, it caused a bug which affected photo uploads. If you experienced trouble uploading a photo in the past week, we have resolved the issue. If you experience any difficulty or issues on our website, please let us know!

Due to overwhelming demand, we have added Soft, Crunchy, and Assorted Mix options to the One Pounder and Half Pounder flavor choices! Of course, these bags can be customized with your dog’s photo just like our single flavor bags.

We have also been busy adding a great selection of toys (including kitty stuff!) to our online store. We have been working on some new recipes in the kitchen too! As always, we pride ourselves in super fast shipping via USPS Priority Mail to anywhere in the U.S.

The best part? It’s only a couple minutes from us! I snapped some photos so you can see what it’s all about (click images for larger versions)…

The Barc Parc in the corner of the YMCA Parking Lot

The entrance to the park has a staging area before you go into the big or small dog sections.

The big dog area also has a second entrance/exit

You have to be below a certain height to enter the small dog area. Small dogs can go into the big dog area!

Just after entering the small dog area, you can walk down the sidewalk towards the wooded area.

Whoa! Easy now party animals. Check out the doggie water fountain!

This view is from the back of the small dog area. There are benches, litter bags and trash cans everywhere.

The wooded area is on the small dog side of the park.

The big dogs and small dogs can still socialize in the shade!

Look how close it is to The Baker's Dog!

]]> http://bakersdog.com/blog/2009/10/a-new-dog-park-the-myrtle-beach-barc-parc-at-62nd/feed/ 5 The Barc Parc in the corner of the YMCA Parking Lot The Barc Parc in the corner of the YMCA Parking Lot The entrance to the park has a staging area before you go into the big or small dog sections. The entrance to the park has a staging area before you go into the big or small dog sections. The big dog area also has a second entrance/exit. The big dog area also has a second entrance/exit. You have to be below a certain height to enter the small dog area. Small dogs can go into the big dog area! You have to be below a certain height to enter the small dog area. Small dogs can go into the big dog area! Just after entering the small dog area, you can walk down the sidewalk towards the wooded area. Just after entering the small dog area, you can walk down the sidewalk towards the wooded area. Whoa! Easy now party animals. Check out the doggie water fountain! Whoa! Easy now party animals. Check out the doggie water fountain! This view is from the back of the small dog area. There are benches, litter bags and trash cans everywhere. This view is from the back of the small dog area. There are benches, litter bags and trash cans everywhere. The wooded area is on the small dog side of the park. The wooded area is on the small dog side of the park. The big dogs and small dogs can still socialize in the shade! The big dogs and small dogs can still socialize in the shade! Look how close it is to The Baker’s Dog! http://bakersdog.com/blog/2009/09/thanks-wfxb/ http://bakersdog.com/blog/2009/09/thanks-wfxb/#comments Wed, 09 Sep 2009 03:04:20 +0000 Paul http://bakersdog.com/blog/?p=646 Our “Vick” on a Stick got a mention on the local FOX affiliate:

It’s about time the local media started paying some attention to us!

Josie is ready for football! Go Cornhuskers!

We’ve had a great first Summer and we’re just really in awe of everyone’s positive comments and support. Now that school is back in session, it’s time for us to get cracking on all those “round tuits” we’ve been talking about. To start, we’ve got several new things going on:

• New business hours. For now, it’s 12pm-7pm during the week and 10am-6pm on Saturdays. That’s seriously cramping our college football lifestyle, so those hours are subject to change.

• New products. We’ve added new items to our online and retail store. We’re also planning on reworking some of our recipes in the coming weeks.

• New promotions. We’re sponsoring several events and contests. Check out the online photo contest at CarolinaLive.com and we’ll also have some items at the Beach Bound Hounds event this month!

• New labels. We’re ready to rotate out our current photos for more Fall and Winter themed shots. Be sure to check the box to allow us to use your custom photo labels.

• New site features. I’ve been wanting to do more of these. But to start, we’ve added the ability to easily re-order items you have ordered in the past:

There’s lot of other exciting product ideas and partnerships we have in development. So be sure to subscribe to our email list or become our Facebook fan to stay on top of the latest news.

This is @trinalina's puppy!

Most business like ours don’t have to deal with such a seasonal surge of visitors like we have here in Myrtle Beach. We knew that our “Winter” hours of 10am-7pm were OK for local folks stopping by on their lunch break and after work. But it was also the exact times that tourists are doing fun things like laying on the beach and eating dinner. As such, we decided to change our hours this week: Monday-Friday we’ll be open 12pm to 9pm and on the weekends we’ll open at 10am and close around 2pm. It was surprising to me that Saturdays are incredibly slow. But if things are hoppin’, we’ll stay open later. So far, it looks like the new hours are working out great! If we can afford to hire more staff, we’ll be able to expand our hours to accommodate everyone’s needs.

Now on to the other stuff…

Email subscribers: Could you do us a favor? If you subscribed any time before June 2009, please unsubscribe and then  re-subscribe at the bottom of the main page. I know it seems weird, but it’s a technical issue beyond our control.

Podcast subscribers: There’s a new feed URL you need to subscribe to: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/TheBakersDogPodcast. I haven’t been able to get the iTunes Store link to update to the new feed yet.

Finally, I was on Twitter and asked for some photos to put in this post. You can click each photo to go to their Twitter profile:

@johnattebury

@digimom1

@pupcakespetbout is a wholesale customer of ours in Columbia, SC!

@vegasrockdog

@agilespots

@jadeheart

@mssophiebelle

If you’re on Twitter, follow these guys!

We tried telling you how social we were before. Well, I guess we’ve been so social that we were chosen to be interviewed as a part of an article in the Weekly Surge about Grand Strand folks on Twitter!

I’m really pleased with the article. It was incredibly well covered and my friend Roger Yale really sifted through my ramblings and got exactly what I was trying to say distilled down to some complete and coherent sentences. Give it a read!

Today, Josie had her first real grooming since we’ve gotten her.  Until Josie learns to run the register and print custom photo labels, I’m pretty much stuck at the store. I decided to give mobile groomer, Snips a try. I knew Jennifer and Bill had run a pet retail store that specialized in holistic foods before they decided to focus solely on grooming. So I knew they were experienced and really cared about the dogs. But I hadn’t heard anything about their grooming service.

I sent them an email to set up an appointment. In the Myrtle Beach area, it’s rare to find businesses willing to respond and work with you over email. So I was pleased when I got a response not too long after sending it. We set up an appointment and they actually arrived at the store early, another rarity when dealing with appointment based services!

Their mobile grooming salon is fully self contained and Josie was transformed in just under 45 minutes. Considering they are a full service mobile groomer (wash, clip, nail trim, ear hair, fluff dry, etc), the pricing was very reasonable. I think most dogs will be right around the $40 range. If you schedule your next appointment with them on the day of the grooming, it automatically enrolls you into their Club Snips loyalty program which will bring the price down even more across multiple visits.

So if you’re a local looking for a groomer or you’re on vacation with your doggy in the Myrtle Beach area, give them a try!

Josie being disgustingly cute... as usual.

I’ve had a list of things I’ve been wanting to do with BakersDog.com for some time. With the post-Easter rush behind us, I’ve managed to tackle quite a few of them:

$1.99 Photo Uploads! In case you haven’t seen or heard about our custom photo packaging, we’ll print whatever photo you upload on our treat bags. Until now, there was only a $4.99 upload fee that covered the cost of processing the photo and saving it to your account. Once saved, you can re-order treats with that photo, share or transfer the photo to others (at no additional cost). For those not interested in saving the photo for future re-orders or sharing, there’s now a $1.99 “Lite” option.

Pet Photographer & Wholesale Program! We’ve started a program for Pet Photographers and other industry professionals (pet sitters, groomers, etc) that are interested in using our custom photo packaging for thank you gifts to clients and other promotions. If interested, please contact us for details. We also have the support in for wholesale customers, we just need to finalize the terms and pricing.

More Baker’s Dog Photos! I’ve been tweeting my tail off and people seem to enjoy my occasional photo tweets. So now you can see the latest ones on the main home page without enduring Twitter.com.

Cakes! We’ve been taking cake orders somewhat discretely for the past couple of months. We wanted to be sure we could provide the best possible product we could before really advertising. Now you can order them online (local customers only, sorry!)

Search! There’s a site search box on pretty much every page now. Now you can just search what you’re looking for instead of me figuring out a clever way to put everything on every page while keeping a clean and simple look.

Stuff You Won’t Notice! That’s right. I made a few small changes and fixes to make your online shopping experience so convenient and pleasant that you hopefully won’t notice at all. If anything doesn’t appear to be working properly, please please let us know.

Got suggestions or requests? We’d love to hear them!

Kira at The Baker's Dog... waiting patiently for treats!

It’s a common misconception that pet bakeries are places for tiara wearing chihuahuas and crystal collared poodles. But consider that a pound of our fresh baked biscuits currently sells for $9.99 and there’s over 100 biscuits per pound. That’s less than 10¢ per treat! In other words, our pet treats are healthy, high quality, AND affordable. Some pet bakeries choose play up to this concept of exclusive luxury and spoiled pets. That’s just not our style.

]]> http://bakersdog.com/blog/2009/02/not-pampered-or-spoiled-just-loved/feed/ 2 kira http://bakersdog.com/blog/2009/01/peanut-butter-recall/ http://bakersdog.com/blog/2009/01/peanut-butter-recall/#comments Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:28:18 +0000 Paul http://bakersdog.com/blog/?p=310

Your puppies are safe with us!

In case you haven’t heard, there’s another massive recall on peanut butter due to salmonella contamination. It has been found in some pet products. The source is a factory in Georgia that makes peanut butter and peanut paste for other commercial food producers.

You can confidently buy The Baker’s Dog Treats without worry. Here’s why:

We’ve got a confession to make. Our peanut butter treats don’t actually contain peanut butter! We grind the dry roasted, unsalted peanuts ourselves.  Why not just use “real” peanut butter? Well, the only difference between ground peanuts and peanut butter is the added salt, high fructose corn syrup, oils, and sugar. Yucky stuff, that you basically don’t want your dog to have. Keep this in mind if you give your dog peanut butter from a jar and be sure you’re using organic, no sugar added peanut butter!

(Done in the voice of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc. If you don’t “get it”, don’t worry… it’s because I’m a bit of a geek. UPDATE: As it turns out, Myrtle Beach was shown in the actual Macworld 2009 Keynote. So maybe Steve was hanging out around here after all!)

Thank you all for visiting. We’ve got some exciting things to share with you today and we just know you’re going to love them as much as we do.

First off our custom photo treat packaging has a been a huge success. Orders are up over 100% over this time last year. We’re going to continue to offer our great, fresh baked pet treats in our online store. You can order custom photos on our large model (1lb) and nano (1/2lb) treat bags. We’ve also added the ability to get kitty treats with custom photos. All of these options are available right now and shipping today on BakersDog.com.

The market for humiliating pets with silly costumes and accesories continues to grow. We’ve taken the same hilarious hats and wacky collars we sold during the holidays and drastically reduced the prices. Today we’re offering goofy santa hats for just $1.99. They’re available right now at BakersDog.com.

Our latest product, the Nom-Nom Sandwich is one of our most popular treats. Our engineers spent countless hours figuring out a way of making a wheat and corn free treat that would meet our standards for quality and simple design. We’re very proud of that process and I’m going to ask Paul Reynolds, our Lead Treat Designer, to come on the stage and tell you a little bit more about it….

(Playing: way too long and boring video about the Nom-Nom Sandwich)

Thanks for that, Paul. We have Nom-Nom Sandwiches can be ordered right now and shipped today. Just visit our online store for more information. And now my good friend, Rick Astley, is going to to tell us a little bit about how much his dog enjoys Baker’s Dog treats and maybe we can get him to sing us a tune…

(Never gonna give up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and…)

…Thank you, Rick. Well folks, thank you so much for you and your dogs continued support. 2008 was a great year for us and we expect 2009 to be even better. We’ve got lots of exciting new products and website improvements planned. Oh, there is one more thing…

PEANUT BUTTER CUPS

On sale TODAY and shipping TODAY

]]> http://bakersdog.com/blog/2009/01/doggy-treat-keynote-address/feed/ 1 pbcup pbcup http://bakersdog.com/blog/2008/12/3-gifts-for-2-at-1-price/ http://bakersdog.com/blog/2008/12/3-gifts-for-2-at-1-price/#comments Fri, 19 Dec 2008 04:12:32 +0000 Paul http://bakersdog.com/blog/?p=181

Fresh labels for some fresh treats. Ready to ship!

Need a last minute holiday gift for a dog lover? We suggest checking out our custom photo treats!

When you give the gift of a custom photo treat you’re giving them fresh baked wholesome treats for their beloved dog, a unique package for them, AND the $4.99 photo upload fee is already paid by you so they can re-order more treats with their dog’s photo at no extra charge. Best of all? It’s cheap (you can get a $5.99 half pound of treats or $9.99 full pound, plus the $4.99 fee) and we’ll process your order within 24 hours of receiving your order. If you place your order by 2pm EST on Friday, December 19th and select rush shipping, we can get it to you by December 24th!

We’ve made it extremely simple to upload a photo and enter the information. We even show you a real-time preview of exactly what the label will look like before you place your order. We will save the photo to your account so you can re-order without it costing any more than our non-custom packaged treats. You share any of your photos to other people so they can use it as if they had uploaded it themselves. We can ship directly to any address in the domestic U.S. that you specify and, if you mark it as a gift order, the packing slip won’t have any pricing information on it.

What are you waiting for?